RICHMOND — Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli II announced Friday that he had received more gifts from Star Scientific chief executive Jonnie R. Williams Sr. than he had previously disclosed, and that he had asked the Richmond commonwealth’s attorney to review his disclosure filings.
Cuccinelli, the presumptive Republican nominee for governor, said he had failed to disclose that he and his family had stayed at Williams’s Smith Mountain Lake vacation house last summer and for Thanksgiving in 2010, when Williams also supplied the turkey dinner.
Va. governor on two-way street with CEO of struggling company
McDonnell and his family get campaign donations and gifts; they give support to company marketing.
Va. attorney general’s disclosure of investment was delayed
Ken Cuccinelli II failed to disclose for nearly a year even as his office was fighting a tax lawsuit filed by the firm.
More news about Va. politics
Cuccinelli amends disclosure forms
Amid controversy over gifts from businessman, Va. attorney general says he failed to disclose some.
Cuccinelli lays out reasons for recusal from mansion chef case
A key witness in the case worked for Cuccinelli’s political fund-raising firm, his office says.
Cuccinelli to air first TV ad of governor’s race
Teiro Cuccinelli, wife of the GOP nominee, offers a softer portrait of the man known for legal battles.
He valued those gifts at a combined $4,500. He also failed to report a $628 flight to New York City from Williams, to attend a Jewish community center event in 2009.
That’s on top of nearly $13,000 in gifts that Cuccinelli had previously reported receiving from Williams.
Cuccinelli said he simply forgot to include the gifts when originally filing his annual disclosure forms. He said a staff member reminded him last week of his 2012 vacation at Williams’s house, prompting him to review his disclosure forms. When he realized that vacation was not included, he said he reviewed calendars for previous years and realized there had been other oversights.
“I missed some things that I was supposed to disclose,” Cuccinelli said. “It was all inadvertent.”
He found two other gifts unrelated to Williams: a chartered flight worth $7,751 for himself and his parents to Southwest Virginia, where Cuccinelli was giving a speech, provided by Alpha Natural Resources; and transportation worth $795 from the Federation of American Coal, Energy and Security.
Until recently, Cuccinelli also owned stock in Star, a former cigarette maker that now makes a nutritional supplement with an substance found in tobacco. Cuccinelli initially failed to disclose his stock holdings but corrected what he said was an oversight in 2012, before recent media scrutiny of the company, which is the subject of a federal securities investigation and two shareholder lawsuits.
The lawsuits alleging that Star, which has lost money for 10 years, misled investors about the promise of its supplement and a facial cream it also makes. Both are sold under the brand name Anatabloc.
Cuccinelli’s ties to Williams have been an unexpected complication to his gubernatorial campaign, with Democrats claiming that his office had conflicts of interests with two cases tied to the Star executive.
Williams has a tax lawsuit against the commonwealth, which has been pending for more than 18 months. Cuccinelli’s office also has a connection to a criminal case against the former chef at the governor’s mansion, who is charged with felony embezzlement.
Williams paid the $15,000 catering tab at the wedding of Gov. Robert F. McDonnell’s daughter, which the chef, Todd Schneider, catered through his private company. Schneider indicated in a motion filed in his case this week that he intends to raise questions about Williams’s gifts to the McDonnell family as part of his defense.
Cuccinelli announced April 4 that he would hand off Star’s tax-assessment lawsuit to private attorneys, who agreed to represent the state for free. Following Schneider’s motion this week, Cuccinelli’s office also said it would seek recusal from prosecution of the chef.
No comments:
Post a Comment